Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told The Daily Caller that the policies President Barack Obama advocated in his State of the Union address would make life “harder” for African-Americans and Hispanics “struggling to climb the economic ladder.” Cruz also said Obama is “not serious about immigration reform.”

“Unfortunately, this is a president who only seems to know how to grow government and not how to grow the economy,” Cruz said Tuesday night at the Capitol. “The policies that the president proposed today were more and more government spending, more and more government debt, higher and higher taxes, and more and more government control of the economy in our every day lives.”

“If the policies that President Obama proposed tonight were enacted,” he continued, “they would make life harder for the 23 million people who are out of work, they would make it harder for them to find a job, they would make life harder for young people coming out of school who are looking for a job, they would make life harder for Hispanics and African-Americans struggling to climb the economic ladder.”

In his address, Obama said the “time has come” to pass comprehensive immigration reform, but Cruz charged that the president is “not serious” about the tackling the issue.

“We need to improve — we need to streamline and make better — the legal immigration system. Right now, sadly, President Obama’s behavior suggests he is not serious about immigration reform; that he’s not looking to actually pass a bill, but instead his behavior indicates he’s looking for a political issue to use in 2014 and 2016 for partisan advantage,” Cruz told TheDC.

“Right now, the single biggest obstacle to serious immigration reform — that No. 1) makes real steps to securing the border; and No. 2) dramatically improves legal immigration and increases the number of high skill immigrations that are able to come and aid with job creation — the No. 1 obstacle to that reform, sadly, is President Barack Obama.”